The town of Debaltseve in
eastern Ukraine was once home to 25,000 people. Now it is a Ukrainian
army stronghold that has sustained heavy shelling from pro-Russian
separatist positions over the past week. Amnesty International estimates
that 2,000 residents have been evacuated since 28 January, and 7,000
remain: photo by Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A woman wipes tears from her
face while waiting on a bus to leave Debaltseve when the road out of
town is deemed to be safe enough: photo by Petr David Josek/AP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

An elderly woman in Debaltseve collects
water from a puddle. The thousands of residents who remain lack running
water, food, electricity and basic medical supplies, according to
Amnesty: photo by Reuters via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A woman cooks on a fire
outside her house in Debaltseve. The current fighting in eastern Ukraine is the most
intense since a fragile ceasefire was signed in Minsk five months ago: photo by Reuters via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

Ukrainian soldiers guard a
check point near Debaltseve, which is home to a strategic railway
junction that lies between the separatist-held cities of Luhansk and
Donetsk: photo by Petr David Josek/AP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A woman carries her belongings to a building used as an evacuation centrein Debaltseve: photo by Petr David Josek/AP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

Debaltseve residents sit on a bus waiting to be evacuated: photo by Manu Brabo/AFP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

"The past 2 weeks have been terrifying" - the people fleeing Ukraine town of #Debaltseve: image via BBC News (World) @BBCWorld, 5 February 2015

"The past 2 weeks have been terrifying" - the people fleeing Ukraine town of #Debaltseve: image via BBC News (World) @BBCWorld, 5 February 2015

A boy looks through a
bus window, waiting for departure. The UN estimates that the conflict in
eastern Ukraine has left more than 5,100 people dead and displaced more
than 900,000 since April 2014. Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed
and 27 wounded in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s
eastern regions in the past 24 hours, Kiev military spokesman Andriy
Lysenko said on Tuesday: photo by Reuters via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A Ukrainian soldier stands
watch on the road between Debaltseve and the Ukrainian-controlled town
of Artemivsk, also in the Donetsk region. On Monday, pro-Russian
separatists vowed to mobilise up to 100,000 fighters for their latest
east Ukraine offensive: photo by Manu Brabo/AFP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A house catches fire after shelling. Mobile phone networks are down, so it''s not possible to call the fire brigade: photo by Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

A Ukrainian tank stands at a military checkpoint in the town: photo by Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

Ukrainian soldiers assist another soldier who was wounded during clashes with pro-Russian separatists near Debaltseve: photo by Manu Brabo/AFP via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

Ukrainian soldiers try to
push-start an armoured personnel carrier at a military checkpoint in
Debaltseve: photo by Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis via the Guardian, 3 February 2015

#Debaltseve: They've packed what they can carry and await evacuation. Need to run an artillery gauntlet out. #Ukraine: image via Maxim Tucker @MaxRTucker, 30 January 2015

President Vladimir Putin with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President
François Hollande in Moscow for an urgent meeting over Ukraine: photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP via The Guardian, 6 February 2015

4 comments:

Scrolling down through the first pictures, the thought came immediately to mind: “Here’s the war in Europe . . . again.” Then come the historical pictures, a brilliant bookend, about the previous carnage three-quarters of a century ago, fought on the same real estate about the same nothing. How right you are, Tom. We might as well throw ourselves headlong against a wall for the amusement of others, over and over—maybe make a few bucks in the offing. Pobre Debaltseve. Pobre nosotros.

Frosty sighs all round. Yes, I guess one has to be "of a certain age" to see the return of the past in all this... and certainly many of the most vulnerable displaced persons whose deprivation and suffering we observe in this grim landscape of death and sorrow are of that age, and must remember.

Caught in the tight passages of history, now -- so many who are in the way, who therefore must be moved out of the way, one way or the other.

There is nothing to love and everything to fear from Putin, but when you see that mumpy Yank politician from yesteryear banging the tin war drum this hard, again, over on this side of the Liars' See-Through Curtain, you realise there is much to fear from all sides.

Laying grand tonnage in weaponry upon the Ukrainians so that they may be enabled to conduct in "our" calculated strategic interest a proxy war which they would inevitably pay a terrific price in losing (and they could surely be counted on to lose, notwithstanding their commitment) -- that seems to be the Republican plan for A Better Tomorrow.

Seeing pictures of the bigwig euro stooges lined up before Vladi to be treated as exactly what they are -- utterly powerless puffs of selfimportant nonentity -- should make it plain what the world's in for, here... and maybe then too, over there... and before too much longer, everywhere (the way the arms manufacturers and defense lobbies would like to have things all the time, anyway).

And yes, though there may remain those whose memory of the stiffening dead littering those same frozen fields lives on, in a situation like this, a long memory and a long history of enmity add up to pretty much the same thing, deep mindless visceral hatred of a kind which only humans seem able to nurture, and for which there can never be a cure -- as it's of the nature of the beast, after all.